By Steve Gorman and Timothy Gardner
PORT FOURCHON, La./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Troops using helicopters and bulldozers, helped by prison inmates, rushed to shore up Louisiana's coast against a huge oil slick on Tuesday as oil company executives traded blame in Washington over what could be the worst spill in U.S. history.
While the executives pointed fingers during a congressional hearing over who was responsible for the April 20 offshore drilling rig explosion that ruptured an oil well still spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico, military and civil authorities focused on trying to limit environmental damage on the coast.
Top executives from the companies drilling the ruptured well testified before U.S. lawmakers as protesters called for boycotts and senators said the explosion and oil spill were due to a cascade of errors. The executives blamed one another for the explosion and failure to control the spill.
At least 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) of crude per day are gushing out of the well owned by BP. The economic and ecological impact could be massive as the spill threatens to devastate wildlife, fisheries, shipping and tourism in four states along the Gulf Coast.
BP's stock recovered after dropping through most of the day, down 0.67 percent in London trading. Company shares have fallen more 15 percent since the rig blast, wiping about $30 billion from its market value.
In Port Fourchon, fatigue-clad Army National Guard troops from the 769th Engineer Battalion of Louisiana sweated alongside prisoners in scarlet red pants and white T-shirts with "Inmate Labor" on the back as they filled giant 1,000-pound (450 kg) sandbags.
The bulging bags were then ferried and dropped by Black Hawk helicopters to plug gaps in outlying barrier island beaches through which the oil could wash into inland marshes and wetlands teeming with wildlife and seafood fisheries.
Authorities are hoping that by bolstering the barrier islands they can keep the oil from the marshlands, where it would be much more difficult to clean off. Bulldozers also worked to build up the beach line in areas they could reach.
"We started filling a few bags Sunday evening but the big push came yesterday," said Sergeant Wesley Melton, 38.
"Just about everybody out here has been deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq, some numerous times. Their mission was clearing routes of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), and mines," he added. "You won't find anyone out here that will complain about helping."
BLAME GAME
In the first of two days of congressional hearings, Lamar McKay, president of BP America Inc, Steven Newman, president of Transocean Ltd, and Tim Probert, a senior executive at Halliburton Co, sat through accusations of blame by senators, then made a few of their own.
Republican Senator John Barrasso told them, "I hear one message and the message is: 'don't blame me.' Well shifting this blame does not get us very far."
The three companies involved in the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico face intense political pressure in the aftermath of the explosion that sank Transocean's Deepwater Horizon rig as it was finishing a well for BP.
Halliburton joins BP and Transocean because it provided a variety of services on the rig and was involved in cementing the well to stabilize its walls and plug it.
Transocean's testimony pinned the explosion on the failure of the cementing to plug the underwater well.
BP directed blame for the blowout at Transocean, the rig's owner and overseer of the operation of the blowout preventer, a stack of pipes and valves designed to close off the flow of oil in case of a sudden pressure change.
"BP continues to make statements that make you believe that it has an arm's-length relationship to the architecture of the well, which is complete nonsense," said Bill Herbert, analyst at Houston-based research firm Simmons & Co International. "Its drilling engineers, we would imagine, were critically involved in all the key steps in drilling this well."
BP, which failed in its first effort to stem the flow of oil, was preparing another fix -- this time with a far smaller funnel than it tried previously.
BRACING FOR IMPACT
U.S. government officials said the impact of the oil spill could be immense. "Until we stop the release of oil from the sea bed, it has the potential to be worse than anything that we've seen," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson told CNN.
In response to the BP spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is due to announce a division of the oversight body that ensures the safety of offshore drilling.
Regardless of who is responsible for the accident, officials agree that delays in containing the leaking well increase the chances it could become the worst U.S. oil spill ever, surpassing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska.
"We're in this subsea environment ... really you're talking about robots for the most part that have to do the actual work," Jackson said. "There's a real frustration about wanting to try things and then realizing that the environment that you're in causes problems."
The latest forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate that southeast winds will persist throughout the week and move the oil westward.
Along the Alabama coastline, residents were bracing for the impact on their shores, and on their livelihoods.
"It is going to touch everyone whose income relates to the water and recreation," said Andrew Saunders, owner of Saunders Yachtworks, a boat repair company in Dauphin Island. "Even if the oil doesn't hit, it will be like 9/11, when people sat on their hands for a couple of months to see what might happen."
Despite the spreading oil, port operators said shipping lanes and ports on the Gulf of Mexico were open on Tuesday.
The spill casts uncertainty on the fate of the Senate compromise climate bill set to be released this week. Some coastal state Democrats have threatened to oppose the bill, which is expected to include measures promoting offshore drilling in new areas.
Florida Governor Charlie Crist on Tuesday signed an executive order creating a Gulf Oil Spill Economic Recovery Task Force "to facilitate efforts by Florida businesses and industries in recovering from the loss of business and revenues due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."
Crist, running for the U.S. Senate, also said he will call lawmakers in for a special session to consider a constitutional ban on oil drilling in Florida's coastal waters.
(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Miami, Erwin Seba in Robert, Louisiana, Verna Gates in Dauphin Island and Anna Driver in Houston; Tom Bergin in London; Writing by Deborah Charles; Editing by Will Dunham)
